An High Functioning Autistic facing the world honestly

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Monthly Archives: November 2014

Note: my HS entry is not REMOTELY dead. In fact I’m almost finished. But this felt urgent.

One of the worst things about AS/HFA has to be the hell that is expressing myself. This might seem strange given there’s around 25,000 words here on this site so far but I’m sure there are issues with that too! This is an entry about what happens when, despite my best intentions, I completely misjudge a situation and humiliate myself.

This happens unexpectedly often and the root of it lies in one of the wonderfully weird things about us: we have a lot of context in our heads usually. When we speak, we hear that context even though others don’t. That has the effect of seemingly or even worse actually saying something very dumb. I might express support for a belief I’m diametrically opposed to when I’m trying to point out a nuance. I might express positive views on a bad piece of work when I’m trying to cite an angle. I might imply something I completely don’t mean to. I’ve even gone so far as to suggest I understood the female body better than a woman when I was trying to console someone.

Pretty humiliating, huh?

This happens a lot on twitter. 140 characters are not my ally. This is again ironic since I am headed for 20K tweets with a bullet but I step wrong a LOT there. I’ve made people furious despite my best intentions. Again, I have so much context in my head and it’s lost in translation.

In real life it’s easier to explain myself but of course much worse since I’m in the same room and can tell I’ve screwed up. Those I have a tendency not to live down. In movies when the sound drops out after something stupid is said? Yeah that’s very real. So is the urge to run.

The thing is, being humiliated is one of the worst things that happens to us. It’s a frustrating inevitability that comes from childhood. A physical bruise? That can heal and it stings so you at least feel the endorphins trying to protect you. But the realization you’ve said something that others are critical of? It breaks you. 9 years later I still have chills when I think about a point I made in an essay that I got mocked for by my professor. These things stay with you sadly.

It makes sense of course. Sadly most of us are victims of teasing. We’re rather, well, triggery. Even though a negative reaction to things we say isn’t teasing, it reminds us of it. We can’t help it.

That doesn’t mean others shouldn’t call us out. It’s just the agonizing fact of things. We’re perpetually going to be in this situation. We just have to develop thicker skin. Easier said than done? Sure. But, well, isn’t that the point.

If I declare myself an optimist, I expect many of you to laugh. After all, am I not in fact among the most anxious of men? I suffer from chronic bouts of depression. I live my life in fear of things going wrong. To say I am an optimist seems to mock the very concept. But, to quote Walt Whitman “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

I am an optimist, but I concede that optimism comes with the caveat that I do contain anxiety and depression. However, if you were to ask me what I believe on a grand scale, I would tell you I believe the better will come. I believe things can and will get better. It’s a macro scale but but I truly do believe that.

And in all fairness, I think on a macro level my life will go well. I’m 30, happily married, ensconced in a career I love. 17 years ago I was a bullied child uncertain life would ever be good. So yeah, in 10 years I expect things to be great, hell in 2 years I do. It’s the next few weeks I have issues with, but on a grand scale I’m expecting good.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons to think things won’t get better. I can list a number right now. Human rights are a travesty. There’s war everywhere. Disease and famine are rampant. Best not to get into climate change. Economies aren’t great, leave it at that.

So let me respond to all of those things and more: We know. We all know all of those things. We don’t ignore that and we absolutely care about all of those things. But we still believe that things can work out. Why?

I’m a student of history. As dreadful as this world can be, it’s not a hopeless one. Technology advances. Medicine gets better. Health improves. Just study the infant mortality rates in the west. OK, so it could be better elsewhere. That’s all the more reason to fight to change things. Because it could. We will never get to utopia, but I genuinely want to believe in things getting better.

I’m also aware of the fact that man is neither good nor bad. In my opinion, man is, if not neutral an intriguing blend of both. I think some of us are prone to darkness, sure. But I also think there are very good people on this rock who genuinely do love.

But I’m not hitting the core. For me, it stems from my childhood. I’ve lived without hope and it got me nowhere. When you just plain expect everything to be bad, you don’t do anything. There’s a lot of sitting around. You don’t fight to improve things. Optimism starts with believing that things CAN get better, not that they will, but that they can. And you can do something about it. Maybe only 2%, but 98% of pain feels ever so much better than 100%.

Optimism is refusing to accept that things will always be awful. It’s looking at what is and doing everything in your power to change it. It’s not thinking everything will be perfect for that’s naiveté. No, it’s vowing to hope even when it’s scary. It’s living with the awareness that we can make things 0.000000000001% better and deciding that it’s worth it. It’s knowing that you will be knocked down but dammit you can get up again.

Maybe I am wrong. There are after all good reasons for cynicism. I’m sure sooner or later I’ll feel like losing it and declaring the world screwed. But I’m here in this moment and if I must have an outlook for the world, I will hope for the best. I might not get there, in fact I won’t. But I’ll get closer than if I’d never started moving in that direction.

I’ve written a lot about depression lately for obvious, sad reasons, but it occurs to me that I haven’t really written about the other side. Manic episodes are often extremely intense periods where everything feels exciting and awesome. You’re really high energy. You want to do everything! Life moves pow pow pow. Oh, that sounds awesome. It’s…not. It’s terrifying.

I have rarely lived up to the title of this blog. The title is supposed to reflect in part my love of film and I usually stay out of discussing that. Hell, I have a second blog for that. Well, here is an experiment. So let’s see where this goes. There will be overlap with my other entries of course but that’s ok.

Since I’ve started writing this blog, one of my goals has been to find topics not covered. Anybody can write about eye contact after all. Relationships are an area I refuse to touch. No, I’m looking for the very specific experiences that get overlooked.

It’s a beautiful day. Can’t be much above 60. :checks phone: 54. Yeah, cold but a dry cold. No real breeze. I’m wearing a coat anyway. Sky is a deep blue. We associate blue with the cold but we never think about the sky in winter. I do.